The Town and the City

by Jack Kerouac

A recent hardback edition in the Barnes&Noble Modern Classics series.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Novels, American, Literature, 20th Century, Literary Fiction

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.

Of French-Canadian ancestry, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 40 years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City (1950), and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, and he went on to publish 12 more novels and numerous poetry volumes.
Kerouac is recognized for his style of stream of consciousness spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, travel, promiscuity, life in New York City, Buddhism, drugs, and poverty. He became an underground celebrity and, with other Beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. He has a lasting legacy, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jerry Garcia and The Doors.
In 1969, at the age of 47, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Since then, his literary prestige has grown, and several previously unseen works have been published.

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book floored me, I loved it. This story is jack Kerouac writing as Thomas Wolfe but emerging as Jack Kerouac. Genius! One of his greatest works! Many people dislike Kerouac because they hate or can't relate to his characters. Some people have a hard time reading his free form, Beat, Jazz, style of writing. But that's just all surface material, and that's the point. Between the lines of text and behind his characters are people just like you and me, each with their own complex story. Love, hate, understanding and indifference. if you want something warm and fuzzy and simple, watch TV!

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

So this is one of the last Kerouac novels I haven't read. I got a lovely old paperback version but was putting off reading it for awhile. I was a bit worried that it would be too normal a novel written before he developed his style. But I totally still loved it. It was such a great book, started so normal American life of the 30s and 40s a family in a small town with their kids, but then before the end people were shooting up and their were books about gay people and murders and it was just brilliant. It was interesting to see some of the familiar cast of characters, but also to see people who don't normally get mentioned, like the father of the family, who was dead in most of the later novels. It was interesting to hear him speak and learn what he was like.

In many ways though this novel seemed less autobiographical. All the kids seemed to have a different aspect of Jack in them. With the exception of the novel about his little brother and Maggie Cassidy so many of Kerouac's books just seem to be him on his own and it was nice to see more of the family. His sister Liz was totally amazing and I really wanted him to write more about her. She went from being a girl in a small town who got married to singing in Jazz clubs in New York and hanging out with all the beatniks in their traditional garb. She sounded fantastic.

I really loved this book. So many passages were just written beautifully. On an emotional level it didn't hit as hard as some of his other books. But still one I will definitely read many times and would highly recommend.

[Velvetink · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not actually aware that this novel's characters were based on real life figures of the Beat generation until AFTER reading it. That kind of put a different light on it to me. While reading it unaware of the real idenitity of the characters, I was more impressed with his characterization of the difference's between the town and country, the effects of WW2 on everyone and the apparent poverty alongside great wealth in New York. Many of the characters in NY like Leon Levinsky and Will Dennison did not seem to be anything like cult figures, writers or from the "Beat" generation (ie in actuality Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs), but merely wayward eccentric figures but not terribly outstanding in any way except that they were disgruntled with the way things were, and atypical of the generation gap. However, considering it was published in around ?1950 - the novel seemed suprisingly modern to me in 2010. The generation gap between youth and society could in fact have been any era up to now.
I also liked his take on how the war effected everyone at the time. The after effects not often talked about. and the crazy "atomic disease theory".


Kerouac says " "Because of the objections of my early publishers I was not allowed to use the same personae names in each work." [2:]

Spoilers~ for those who don't know.....

Real-life person Character name
Jack Kerouac = Peter Martin
Leo Kerouac = George Martin
Caroline Kerouac = Ruth and Elizabeth Martin
Gabrielle Kerouac = Marguerite Courbet Martin
Gerard Kerouac = Julian Martin
George "G.J." Apostolos = Danny "D.J." Mulverhill
Henry "Scotty" Beaulieu = Scotcho Rouleau
William S. Burroughs = Will Dennison
Joan Vollmer = Mary Dennison
Mary Carney = Mary Gilhooley
Lucien Carr = Kenneth Wood
Billy Chandler = Tommy Campbell
Allen Ginsberg = Leon Levinsky
Herbert Huncke = Junky
David Kammerer = Waldo Meister
Edie Parker = Judie Smith
Sebastian "Sammy" Sampas = Alex Panos

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jack Kerouac's first novel was published in 1950 by Harcourt Brace. It would be seven years before he was able to get another novel published. On the Road made him famous, infamous and ultimately unhappy. During those seven years he wrote many other novels, most of which were not published until after his death in 1969.

The Town and the City is a family saga set at first in Lowell, MA, his hometown. He calls the town Galloway and renames the family members, including himself. It is a tale of growing up during the Depression in a large family of five brothers and three sisters and tracing the fate of that family through World War II, through their wanderings and separations, and into postwar times. The city is New York where many family members end up.

The writing is probably the most restrained of his career but the seeds of his style, his concerns and his traveling ways are all in the book. The story careens, the characters erupt, the philosophy of this great and troubled writer grows along with his family, friends and lovers. I was a toddler in 1950 but as I grew up I saw my father struggle with many of the same issues. Luckily for our family he stayed fairly level and steady, but as I read about Peter in The Town and the City, I relived parts of the deep connection I had with my father.

The novel is long but I read it in four days because as always, Kerouac just pushed, dragged and carried me along.

[Kevin Kizer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A favorite of mine that I re-read every year during autumn. A wonderful, sad elegy to an America long since gone. Definitely, the most traditional of all Kerouac's novels. You can see (read?) the influence of Thomas Wolfe, which annoyed Kerouac. It's a great precursor to "On The Road", even ending with "Peter Martin" getting ready to hitchhike across the country. For me, the Thanksgiving football bit (which closes the first major section of the novel) is one of the best parts. Kerouac does a great job of describing a high school football game and what it feels like to be a part of it. Also, the New York bits, where he meets Levinsky, et al. Another precursor to future Kerouac books.

Definitely not his best book (and a bit cliched in parts) but very enjoyable, very nostalgic and lots of great little bits of Kerouac-iness.

[Sairam Krishnan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeous, gorgeous read. Kerouac's first book is everything I thought it would be, and more. I had been waiting to get my hands on this particular edition because of the intriguing Penguin Classics cover featuring a cigarette smoking Jack; when I did, I waited for the perfect time to read it. And then took my time doing so.
I've been reading it for almost a month now, and I have seldom loved a book so much.

Kerouac's timeless story of a small town American family coming to live in NY through circumstance and misfortune is as beautiful as it is sad, and deserves to be celebrated much more than it is. Any fool can see that Jack's alter ego is Peter Martin, college football hero turned lonesome traveller, and apple of George Martin's eye. And It it through him that we see the most tumultuous events unfolding.

America goes to World War Two, and a family reels in the shockwaves a distant war sends through it, ripping them apart and sending people far away from the soil of their homelands. The sadness in the story is exquisite, a sort of weight that hangs in the air right through.

My favorite parts of the book, though, are the scenes of Galloway, drawn by Kerouac liberally drawing from his own Lowell, and the happiness of life in an American small town, in the shadow of a perennial river flowing by - friends and family and good food and hard work and the smell of mountain rain.

For a Kerouac fan like me, this book is pure unadulterated joy, and shall remain so.

[Michael Boyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was surprised by this book. I didn't read it for a long time. I won't say the obvious things about it. Many said unkind things about it. Compared it mostly to another writer, in a disparaging way that I find prejudicial, and interesting for that. I didn't read it until recently, even though I've read his other works avidly and some of them repeatedly since I was a teenager. I re-read work very sparingly. There is a lot of good wrting out there waiting to be read. Anyway, I decided to read this finally after reading about it in a biography of Kerouac called Memory Babe. I enjoy this biography a great deal. I'm still reading it. There were passages quoted in the biography that I thought were quite beautiful and rather consistent with my sense of Kerouac's poetics. So I tried to get it as an ebook and it's not available that way. So I got it from the library. It's more and more difficult to collect books as objects given how much room they take up in increasingly small spaces we are living in. And I wasn't sure I wished to own it. I pretty much gobbled up the book, large though it was. So I will own a copy soon.

I was struck by how regardless of the difference in the use of the subjective case pronoun, the sensibility really was the same. The poetics were forming at an early stage, and the sense of the world, of sadness and of human frailty, were consistent. Of course it made a difference to him. He felt more free writing how he wrote afterwards. He interests me because he was always trying to advance in his aesthetic. Fame seemed to ruin that for him. Alcoholism didn't help. He's a bit of a tragedy. But he also was sublime, and his writing was sublime at times as well.

I was intrigued by depictions of New York in the 1940s, of music, of film, of literature, of social life, of a new kind of woman speaking in a new type of way in literature, with a new mobility, of the depiction of changes resulting from the 2nd World War, of rural life in Massachusetts, of the cultural landscape that he was so great at sketching. I was also entertained by the early renderings of the cast of characters that were such a deep essential part of his life. And finally, I was taken by of a sense of his family life that I never really had before. I was fascinated, moved and entertained by this work. Some of the sentences blew my mind. Their rhythm and lyrical quality were definitely at times sublime.

In a way, I am glad it took me this long to get around to reading it. It was as though I found a long lost work by an artist, without suffering the disappointment that sometimes comes from finding such. It is or was an annexed work, but it is well integrated now for me.

[Sergio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Molti anni fa, dopo aver terminato di leggere "Sulla Strada" ed esserne rimasto letteralmente folgorato e conquistato, mi misi alla ricerca di altri libri di questo fantastico scrittore americano che mi regalassero le stesse meravigliose sensazioni, ma sia "I vagabondi del Dharma" che " I sotterranei", di cui gli amici mi parlavano bene, non mi allettarono e così misi da parte l'idea e lasciai che nella mia mente Kerouac si distinguesse per quell'unico capolavoro. Solo recentemente, dopo essermi ricordato di aver comprato negli anni '90 "La città e la metropoli" ho cominciato a leggerne le prime pagine...e un'altra volta mi sono ritrovato travolto da un grandissimo libro, da un romanzo nel pieno stile che io definisco "americano": il racconto di una famiglia, quella di George Martin, che dopo aver vissuto a lungo in una piccola città di provincia dove i figli studiano e crescono, coltivano amicizie e i primi amori, si trasferisce a Brooklyn, New York, e là la famiglia sbanda, fra alterne vicende si perde e si ritrova fino all'epilogo doloroso e amaro ma egualmente pieno di speranza x il futuro di quel nucleo che ha disseminato i suoi atomi senzienti per le vie dell'America, senza dimenticare il passato ma per cercare il futuro.

[Francesco · Rating 5 out of 5]

le ultime 5 righe del romanzo sono la sintesi della beat generation... la beat è nata lì ... in quelle ultime 5 righe Kerouak mette se stesso ON THE ROAD

[Joshua Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

A unique book in Kerouac's canon, The Town and the City is ultimately a rewarding read. Perhaps more accessable to your standard reader, it flows much more conventionally than his other, more stylistic novels.

It follows the ups and downs of the traditonally American (and somewhat cliched) Martin family, with a particular focus on the sons Peter, Francis and Joe. The narrative and setting are not particularly original; the early portions set in the town of Galloway largely echo much of early 20th century American literature. Despite the slow start, the novel picks up after the first hundred pages, hitting full steam as the brothers start moving to New York. Kerouac's knack for writing in urban settings is certainly glaringly obvious here - the last third of the novel is certainly the spiritual origin of the rest of his more acclaimed work.

Kerouac's writing is certainly developing here. There are more than a few absolutely sparkling paragraphs, descriptions and fresh metaphors to be found. It is in these moments of lucidity that Kerouac seems to channel something universally human that touched me - despite the occasional plastic character or overdone American sentimentalism. It is these passages that justify the existence of this book... and why you should read it.

While it certainly is overlong and a touch unoriginal, The Town and the City was a pleasant surprise for me. Kerouac's touch still oozes through the pages... in a more conventional way.

[Bianca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il meccanismo narrativo alla base di questo romanzo è incredibilmente affascinante. C'è Kerouac, ma non è ancora il Kerouac di Sulla strada che conosciamo più o meno tutti. Il romanzo, di per sé molto lungo, nasce come il racconto della vita della numerosa famiglia Martin tra la città (Galloway) e la metropoli (New York) e dei vari membri della famiglia racconta vita, crescita, riflessioni. Poi, però, intorno alla parte terza (con la comparsa della guerra), il libro si trasforma. Da occuparsi di tutti i personaggi si concentra su uno in particolare, Peter, che sin dall'inizio appare come il protagonista più interessante. La struttura del romanzo si sfalda, lo stile cambia. Il romanzo classico inizia a diventare il romanzo alla Kerouac. Ed è incredibilmente affascinante scoprirne l'evoluzione, seguire la crescita dello scrittore attraverso quella dei personaggi. Non sono un'amante di Kerouac, e infatti non è veramente lui, il narratore che emerge da questo libro. È un libro da leggere, anche perché è uno di quei libri che "fa primavera", come amo ripetere, soprattutto nella prima e nella seconda parte.
P.S. Se ci riuscite, cercate però un'altra edizione. Questa è piena di refusi e la traduzione è palesemente "vecchia", con tanto di D eufoniche di corredo.

[Tim Weakley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to keep reminding myself that Kerouac was 28 when this was published. While you can tell that he hadn't quite found his voice yet the elements of his stories to come were already to be seen here. The bebop, drug culture, and New York City elements are a great contrast to the small town beginning, and the ending rural reclamation and reconciliation on the old family home. Kerouac ends the book off with Peter, the lonesome child, starting off on a hitchike across America which echoes forward to "On The Road" and other works to come.

Some of the prose, and plot development, was awkwardly done. You can see it was an early work, but you forgive it when he gets this whole idea of individuation as a family. That a father just muddles along doing the best he can, and that he's not the authority on everything that he always appears in his children's minds. He portrays the father as brother, and son with a real facility.

Great read.

[Ned · Rating 5 out of 5]

and reading this was like sticking my head right into the lost, forlorn, desperate, burning soul of Kerouac... and knowing I'm just where I'm supposed to be. and knowing there's some way to expel all the heartbreak and beauty out of ourselves.... the realness of being... that thing that heaves so often in my chest. and a book can be that. Truman Capote never read this...

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 3/4 stars

[Divya Pal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just goes on and on about an American family – getting tiresome at times - echoes of his better known On the Road.
Nothing like the classic A Tale of Two Cities or the para-dimensional The City & the City.
There is an occasional flash of brilliance

…drinking a coke at the corner drugstore in absorbed melancholy, but all the time he is balancing life and death, stumbling through a thousand moods of horror and hate, watching himself step discreetly through all the philosophies, sects, factions and cults of a hundred books, living the despondencies of many heroes – Jean Valjean, Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, Anna Karenina, Greta Garbo, Byron, Tristan, Hedda Gabler.

Then, as the sun came up in full brilliant array far off over the hills, fanning light all over the sky and gilding little dawn-clouds that were regimented beautifully overhead, the boys fell silent, in awe, and stood on the two hills watching…

Thus spake Doc Daneeka to Yossarian

Like you say they’d have to prove you’re nuts for not wanting to fight their silly wars. Well, that’s one way of putting it.

Getting back to Jack Kerouac from Joseph Heller

It’s the great molecular comedown. It’s really an atomic disease. It’s death finally reclaiming life, the scurvy of the soul at last, a kind of universal cancer. It’s got a real medieval ghastliness, like the plague, only this time it will ruin everything.

I said to myself, cockroaches are human too, just as much as us human beings. Reason for that is this: I’ve watched them long enough to realize their sense of discretion, their feelings, their emotions, their thoughts, see.

‘Oh him? He’s a disgruntled Chicagoan who loves Bach, spaghetti, Cris-craft cruises, tubercular women, and pains at Carmel in the summer.’

He was that all struggles of life were incessant, labourious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labour, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings – all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavour.

One needs a lot of patience to complete the book.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jack Kerouac's "The Town and the City" (1950) is a great deal like Thomas Wolfe's great American bildungsroman "Look Homeward Angel"(1929) but vastly inferior. It is quite amazing to think that the author of such an inconsequential work would go on to have such a brilliant career.
Today people are still reading "The Town and the City" because of Kerouac's other novels notably "On the Road" and "Dharma Bums". Thomas Wolfe's "Look Homeward Angel" is being forgotten because he never again wrote anything nearly as good.
Although, I am personally appalled by its lack of originality, "The Town and the City" is still worth reading for die-hard Kerouac fans. In one finds many of the themes that will dominate his subsequent works. Kerouac wanted love from his family without judgement. He had his own unique brand of spirituality comprised of Roman Catholicism, Buddhism and euphoric alcoholism. He proposed that life should be lived in a wild and unstructured manner. He was ultimately the greatest of the beats. As the novel concludes, the protagonist and alter ego of Kerouac is setting out on the road.
"The Town and the City" is somewhat innovative as a bildungsroman in that Kerouac attempts to give all of the many siblings in the hero's family equal space. He seems to be saying that one grows up as a member of a family not as an individual, although still insisting that that the individual family member has the right and the duty to do his or her own thing in life.
"The Town and the City", however, has multiple problems. The first three-quarters of the novel devoted to Kerouac's child and teen years in Lowell, Massachusetts (Galloway) are far too bucolic. At the start, Kerouac's family do not practice their religion. As the novel progresses, they start to attend church, pray the rosary and confess their sins. In the last quarter, Kerouac deftly describe the confrontation between his family and his "Beat" friends (Allen Ginzburg, William S. Burroughs, etc.) but says very little about the "Beats" as an artistic phenomenon.
I think that the French title, "Avant la route" ("Before the Road"), summarizes the value proposition of "The Town and the City". You read it only if you want to know what happened before "On the road".

[Randy Rhody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very readable with broad audience appeal. This first book of Kerouac’s may be his best, and so unlike all his others. The language is outstanding. So are the insights—at times surprisingly perceptive for a writer in his late twenties. And without the bebop hoopdee-doo karma jazz that later became his trademark.

A sweet thoughtful story for the most part, of a large New England family, spanning 1935 to 1945, where the author himself is the sixth of nine siblings, a middle child whom we follow most closely. Well into the book the family moves to Brooklyn and for about 75 pages we meet some of Kerouac’s later standard characters, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Huncke and Carr. Neal Cassidy makes no appearance. This is the only section that it would be an improvement to omit, but I suppose their doings was a novelty in 1950.

You’ll find that Kerouac was fond of the word “jubilantly.” I swear it appears at least every ten pages. I’m not exaggerating. My copy is 499 pages, and “jubilantly” easily appears fifty times. The first is on page 16, the last on page 495. On a few occasions he uses “jubilant” instead, and “jubilance” (page 20) and “jubilation.”

The Town and the City bears no resemblance to The City & the City.

[Tom Anderson]

This took me a long time to read, mainly because how awful I was with organising time to read in 2023. I read over half of the book in 2 weeks, compared to the 2 to 3 months I spent putting it off.

Love what I’ve read of Kerouac and was interested to read this because it is his first published novel. Sometimes it captures what I love about his work, other times a bit of a slog. I don’t care about American football, it’s lame compared to actual football. I don’t care about Peter, Francis and Liz were the most interesting of the Martins but unfortunately they don’t get much to do by the end, lot of their development is off page (is that the book term for off screen?). Still, I liked it enough but not as much as the others

[Chiara Furfari · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Era un divoratore di libri, scontento e assorto, giovane e solitario, come ce ne sono tanti in giro per l'America, sparpagliati in modo esiguo e quasi patetico in città e metropoli: facili da ferire, inermi di fronte al disprezzo, troppo sensibili nella loro dichiarata e meditabonda solitudine per affrontare gli scherzi impietosi, le grezze cialtronerie, la brutalità animale, la noncuranza feroce di un'America selvaggia ed entusiasta nel fulgore della sua dirompente giovinezza. Era solo e timoroso, talvolta finanche sprezzante. Era diverso dai ragazzi della sua età che di solito trascorrevano il loro tempo nelle gelaterie, o davanti all'emporio all'angolo, o sui campi di atletica, o insieme alle ragazze al cinema e nei dancing. Era diverso da loro e ne era fiero.��� 
 
In poco più di 500 pagine Kerouac racchiude la vita intera, scegliendo di mettere una parte di sé in ognuno dei 5 fratelli Martin, protagonisti del romanzo. Viviamo con loro gli anni tragici della seconda guerra mondiale e seguiamo il tortuoso sparpagliarsi per il mondo di un’intera famiglia, dalla vita nella città rurale in cui tutti sono nati ad una New York che sembra inghiottire ogni speranza, nell’illusione di trovare qualcosa di meglio. Ogni personaggio è unico e talmente dettagliato da potersi distinguere da tutti gli altri alla perfezione. La figura del padre, il vero collante dei Martin è la mia preferita: struggente, ma di una dolcezza e di una potenza memorabile. Lo stile di scrittura incanta, sembra quasi di leggere una poesia ricca d’immagini che inevitabilmente rimangono impresse nella testa di chi legge. Kerouac era dotato di una sensibilità davvero straordinaria. 
Se come me non avete avuto una grande impressione di “On the road”, romanzo che ha consacrato l’autore al pubblico, provate a partire da qui, dal suo primo libro pubblicato e poco conosciuto. Sono sicura che cambierete opinione.

[blake mawhorter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early kerouac is a whole different experience. He had yet to find his niche writing style which is super apparent in things like the dialogue — it could be very amateurish and naive, even dull at times. However, you can just feel his romantic prose poking through every page. It really did feel like reading the dramatic prequel to what would become kerouac’s blurred semi-autobiographical duluoz legend, written by a different younger man who saw the world in much simpler terms than his later explorations of existence, spirituality, and love-drenched despair. His only true novel, there’s a lot of pages and too much to cover. It’s better left as is, without analyzing.

3.9/5